


this is what you wanted

by dollsome



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 03:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19124038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: Villanelle goes to Alaska. Set after the season two finale.





	1. What A Bitch

**Author's Note:**

> As a lifelong Alaska kid I was very tickled by Villanelle daydreaming of running away to ol’ AK with Eve, but also I was immediately like, “Girl, you would HATE Alaska!”. Apparently, this feeling was so strong that it grew into this monster. I have no idea what the flippin' hell possessed me to do a giant (at least by my writing standards!) character study of Villanelle, but I guess that's what just happened????
> 
> Basically, I like the idea of her action at the end of season two being something that ultimately forces her to grow up instead of regressing, so that's kiiind of what gets explored here. In a Villanelle logic kind of way.

Alaska is shit.

Villanelle finds this out too late.

She needed to get out of Europe. There was nothing left for her there. So she picked an island, that one full of bears. She looked at pictures on the internet, and they all made her big promises. Green, rolling mountains, like Ireland with sharper teeth. Brown bears and tall pink flowers. The ocean everywhere, a bright drown-in-me blue. In 1964, there was a tsunami there that wiped out the entire downtown. Before it, an earthquake shook the ground for five minutes. Five minutes isn’t long enough when you are happy, but it is eternity in a moment that hurts.

The five minutes walking away from those ruins, away from Eve who’d already walked away from her, hurt worse than the knife plunging in. She almost turned back so many times. Her hands--one clutching the gun, one clenched into a fist--screamed out, wanting to press against the part of Eve that had burst open and stop the bleeding. _Don’t die, don’t leave me, you’re mine._

But Eve wouldn’t want that. Didn’t want her, even after Villanelle had given her everything, set her free, turned her dull life to fireworks. Eve would rather die. And so Villanelle kept walking.

Now she will walk right out of her old life and into something new.

She hopes for more earthquakes. For a land as wild as the feelings inside her.

 

* * *

 

To get ready, she shops: buys every outrageously expensive cozy sweater she can, and does not think about the ones that would look good on Eve, does not think about forcing Eve to try on bright colors she would usually avoid, does not think of the playful wolf whistle she would curve her lips into after Eve slid the sweater on, or the way they’d laugh together and wrestle a little and maybe kiss as Villanelle adjusted the sweater just right, then fall still in unison at the sight of Eve in the changing room mirror, turned perfect by Villanelle’s good taste. ‘See? I was right,’ Villanelle does not say. She has no one to say it to. ‘This is why you should always listen to me.’

 

* * *

 

The journey is long, uncomfortable, and boring. She flies coach like a normal person as an experiment. Turns out, you need someone you love at your side. Otherwise, normal is the worst kind of pain.

 

* * *

 

She spends six hours in the Anchorage airport, which depresses her because it is full of restaurants and shops, just like any other place full of people. Not rustic at all. Nothing special. You can barely see the mountains out the tall windows.

The airport that awaits her at her final destination one forty-five minute flight later depresses her more. You just step off the plane into the open air, like a poor person or an animal. These mountains greet you right away, greener than anything you can imagine (Eve wore green when she killed, when she died). But the air is damp and cold, and when Villanelle pauses to take in the view, an employee in an orange vest scolds her, urging her forward. She thinks about throwing him into a propeller as she walks. She laughs to herself. Now, that would be something. She has seen it a lot in movies, but not in real life. Yet.

The airport is about the size of the bathroom in Aaron Peel’s house. Inside, everyone seems to know each other. They hug and hang off one another’s every mediocre word. The chatter is deafening. She tries to ignore it. There are no shops and two vending machines. She buys a pack of Skittles and makes faces at the child who stares at her in pouting envy while she waits for her bag to show up on the belt.

She rents a car and even though everything is on the wrong side, she drives perfectly. There’s only one lane going each way, and the road hugs the mountainside like it’s trying to fuck it, like whoever built it was afraid to wake some giant slumbering beneath the rolling green. Huge angry raindrops slap against the windshield. The car glides over standing water and for a second it feels like flying.

Then she steers it back onto trustier pavement, away from the water-collecting grooves. She did not come here to die. She’s not the one who deserves to.

There’s ocean on the other side of the road, only a thin metal guard rail between the car and it. The water is ugly, thrashing and gray.

 

* * *

 

Her Airbnb is in the middle of a dense mossy forest full of shadows, the kind of place where hearts get chopped out in a fairytale, but it is a house, not a cabin, and there are too many neighboring houses not-quite-hidden by the trees. She can hear nearby children screeching with glee.

The house is clean and so ordinary she could vomit. There is nothing Alaskan about it: no log walls, no crackling fire, not even any animal heads tackily hanging around the room. Everything is white and beige. The closest thing to rustic Alaska charm is a knitted blanket with a pattern of little bears and moose tossed over the sofa. Not good enough.

She stares at her face in the wall mirror, which is one of those tacky designs that she guesses basic middle class women find, like, so cute. The frame around it is shaped like the rays of the sun. Her reflection looks tired. Still beautiful, but fading, like a woman dying of consumption in a nineteenth century book by a man with a woman-dying-of-consumption fetish. Her hair is wet and limp. She tousles it with her fingers.

The host isn’t here, but they left a list of instructions in a purple folder marked “READ ME! :)” on the unblemished kitchen counter. Villanelle opens the folder and stares at the full page of printed-out text, the paper slightly wrinkled from the guests who stayed before. If Eve were here, she would read every line, savoring each rule like bites of a cupcake. Eve is such a nerd.

Was. Is. Who knows. She doesn’t care.

She closes the folder unread and sets it back on the counter. Then she picks it up again and throws it across the room. Better.

When she goes to bed, she settles in the middle of it. The blankets are scratchy. Outside the sun doesn’t set. Little slivers of light sneak in around the blackout curtains no matter how many times she gets up to adjust them. She squeezes her eyes as tight as she can, digs her face into the cheap pillow, and still the light, the fucking light.

 

* * *

 

Driving around to get the lay of the land, she discovers that lots of the street names are Russian. There is a little Russian Orthodox Church too, its domes bright blue like the sky should be. The universe is laughing at her, she decides. What a bitch.

It doesn’t matter. Oksana is dead. Dead with her family. Deader than Eve.

 

* * *

 

Alaska sounded like the perfect place to be in a love bubble. No people to interrupt her and Eve. A place only theirs.

Turns out, there are people. There is just no culture.

There’s a Walmart a five-minute drive away from the rented house. All of the women in this place wear brown rubber boots and puffy vests and no makeup. You couldn’t buy a designer anything if you tried, except for maybe the stupid wellies. Eve would have fit right in here. She loves giving up on herself.

Villanelle buys the most expensive pair of the boots--they are called Xtratufs (God, _so_ lame)--from a website she browses on her new phone. The tops of the boots fold down, revealing elaborate drawings of bright red octopus tentacles. She orders them express and still has to wait three days, then picks them up at a sad little post office with a view of the nearby McDonald’s. There is always a line. It’s disgusting.

She goes to the Walmart out of morbid curiosity. She has seen some disturbing things but this takes the cake. Even the fluorescent lights seem depressed. Hives flirt with her skin just looking at the clothes section. $1.80 for a t-shirt? Really?

“Can I help you find anything?” a blue-vested employee asks her.

“I’ve never been to a Walmart before,” she replies. Her American accent is half-hearted.

“Really?” The employee stares at her like she is the weird one. Which, okay. Sure.

“Really,” she repeats, widening her eyes mockingly.

“You should have seen how excited everyone was when this one opened back in the early 2000s. The place was packed. People couldn’t believe you could finally buy clothes somewhere on this island.”

“That is very sad,” Villanelle says, grimacing.

“When you live here you learn to appreciate what you’re given, huh?”

Villanelle gives her a smile that turns into a scowl once she’s gone.

 _You know_ , she would tell Eve if Eve hadn’t betrayed her, if Eve was here too, _this is exactly what is wrong with America_.

Instead, she walks the store alone. It is the worst. They do have cute socks, though. She slips a pair covered in little foxes into her bag.

In the tourist gifts section, she eyes a postcard with a vacant-eyed salmon and curly fonted text that says, _Fish you were here!_

“Stupid,” she mutters, and buys it anyway.

She hangs it on the fridge. With the front facing forward, anyone might have sent it to her.


	2. No Touching

The house has a wood stove, the one rustic thing about it, but she isn’t supposed to use it. There’s a note taped to the top imploring her not to; it has a little smiley face at the bottom, as if that will curb any arsonist impulses.

Villanelle tears it in half and tosses it inside the hungry mouth of the stove. Why have a thing like that if you’re not going to use it?

So she turns off the thermostat, and she does.

Out next to the house, there’s a pile of chopped firewood, alongside some lumber that hasn’t been cut yet. An axe leans against the chopping block; her heart rises up and chokes her at the sight of it. She wraps her hands tenderly around the handle, presses one fingertip like a kiss to the blade. She thinks of hot blood splattering her face, put there by Eve.

She is good at chopping wood. She doesn’t hesitate. Her every swing is precise, no second guessing, and her muscles sing at it, her sweat washed away by the rain as soon as it blooms on her skin. If Eve were here too, it would make her eyes turn darker with want, watching. She always wanted Villanelle.

Not enough.

Villanelle slams the axe down with extra vigor. She understands now why dumb hunky men always do this in movies.

One day, two little girls ride by on pink bikes, inspecting the new neighbor hard at work.

They stare at her in silent curiosity.

“Go on, or you’re next,” Villanelle finally snarls. She waves the axe like a grumpy old man.

The girls giggle, delighted by the brush with death, and ride on. They don’t mind the rain, happy adventurers together.

 

* * *

 

There’s a boat harbor in the heart of town, opposite a big mountain covered in six giant white wind turbines that wave to her like angels. A narrow ribbon of road divides land and sea. The boats bob, neat and orderly, side by side, like little chicks roosting.

One night when she cannot sleep, when it is finally almost dark outside, she decides to check it out. She parks the car and walks down shaky metal stairs to the narrow dock that weaves between the boats. The dock feels untrustworthy beneath her feet, like it might give way and plunge her into the cold. She is sick of that feeling. She wishes she could trust anything besides herself. The water is still on either side of her, dark and deep. Creepy. There are sea lions down there, she’s heard. It would be funny if after all she has been through, she dies eaten by sea lions.

Eve would laugh, probably.

“Hey.”

She turns to find a scruffy-looking twenty-something boy smoking a cigarette, the tip glowing in the dark. A fisherman.

He stares at her.

“Hey,” she says, American. Better to blend in.

“Weird place for a girl to be walking alone.”

“You’re walking alone.”

“I’m not a girl.”

“Too bad,” Villanelle says.

He doesn’t say anything else. She turns and keeps walking.

“Hey,” he says, his voice too loud behind her, so she knows he is closer than he was a second ago, “would you want to--”

She turns, so quick he flinches and drops his cigarette. Its little glow is extinguished.

She thinks of slamming him down onto the edge of the dock. Holding his head under in the cold, black water. Letting him up for air, but never long enough. Watching as he watches her kill him.

“Don’t follow women around in the dark, asshole,” she says instead. These people are not worth it. Besides, she doesn’t work for free.

 

* * *

 

Nobody locks their cars here.

She falls into the habit, while she’s out and about, of swinging open driver’s seat doors and stealing things. She only takes what it will hurt to lose: a phone charger, a twenty dollar bill, a Kindle tucked carefully in the glove compartment. One day she finds a brightly frosted birthday cake from the grocery store on a passenger’s seat. When she gets home, she dips her finger in the frosting and licks it off. It is not great, but it tastes better stolen than it would have paid for.

People take to the local Facebook group page (a group she joined with a fake name and a profile picture of a sunset) to complain about the car thefts, blaming kids off their minds on drugs. There is a bad drug problem here, it turns out. Delinquents always trying to smuggle heroin in. Boys getting hooked and killing themselves.

Villanelle understands. It is so boring here. The rain keeps on. There has not been a single day without it yet. The only beautiful thing in this shithole town is the landscape, and the rain says, _No touching. None of this is for you._

 

* * *

 

After days of bingeing Netflix, all of those shows that Buzzfeed articles tell you to watch with your special someone, after imagining all the spots where Eve would laugh at Grace and Frankie (there are a lot; it is a good show, though the portrayal of queerness is not great, needs more nuance), she gets off the couch. Her legs itch to move. She has probably gained weight, eating and moping and not much else, but she ignores the bathroom scale.

She puts on her hard-won Xtratufs and goes outside for a drive. It is not raining today; the sky is still full of moody clouds, but bits of blue peek through them. It is the first time the ocean has looked a little like it did in the pictures. She drives for a long time, until she finds a stretch of nature without any little human-shaped dots in the distance. She parks the car and walks along a beach, the rocks uneven beneath her feet, the ocean frothing against the black sand. The water is so cold it hurts when she bends down to dip her fingers in. The air stinks like salt.

She wonders what she will do if a bear finds her. The grass beyond the rocks is tall enough to hide anything.

She decides to walk through it, feeling like a child in a maze or a house of mirrors, never knowing what awaits her next. She’ll be fine; she can run fast.

But nothing hunts her; she is mostly alone. There are a few birds in the sky, crying out, and once she steps on a branch and spooks something shy and fast into running away from her.

Konstantin always used to tease her about being such a city girl, so cosmopolitan, loving comfort and nice things. If only he could see her now.

Soon she is immersed, a sea of green grass on all sides. She plucks a plant she now knows is called fireweed, a scepter of deep pink blooms, and carries it between her fingers as she walks onward. If she was not here alone, she would have handed it to Eve, kissed her nose, then traipsed ahead along the trail, leaving Eve alone to stew in surprise and love.

If Eve had loved her, this place would be beautiful.

 

* * *

 

In her dream she is walking through the mossy forest. All the houses are gone. There is a bright red cabin in the middle of the woods.

Home, but not home.

She is wearing that nightgown she hates, the one Julian gave her when he locked her in his freaky doll house. Her feet are bare and bloody.

Eve is here too. She wears a puffy dark green vest and Xtratufs like a good Alaska girl. Her hair is tied back in a firm knot. What a waste.

 _There you are_ , Villanelle says, reaching for her hand. _You took forever_.

Eve squeezes, digs her fingernails in. _You’re crying_.

 _It’s the rain,_ Villanelle protests.

 _What rain?_ Eve says.

She’s got her there.

They keep walking closer and closer to the red cabin. It isn’t a cabin at all, Villanelle realizes. It never was.

 _What’s in there?_ she asks, her voice small.

 _What you deserve_ , Eve says.

 

* * *

 

People let their dogs wander anywhere here. Apparently no one has heard of fences or leashes. Then they turn to the Facebook group and whine that they cannot find their dog, or that they found a stranger’s and don’t know what to do with it.

If you love something, you keep it close. You don’t give it the option to run away. That way, you never have to know if it would have taken it.

This town is full of idiots.

One morning she goes outside to carry in more firewood and discovers a gray cat poking around the yard. She hates dogs, but cats are okay. They have some self respect.

She feeds it slices of fresh salmon from the grocery store and coos at it. She likes having something to talk to for a change.

The cat comes back the next day. She feeds it more. When she leaves the door open, it follows her inside and inspects the room, its tail swishing loftily.

“Pretty kitty,” she says.

It looks up at her.

“You need some company, hmm?” she murmurs, kneeling down to pet it. “Me too.”

She stops by the tiny pet store in the veterinary clinic and buys all the most expensive cat stuff it has. The cat’s days of outdoor wandering are over. Now, it will know what it is to be treated well.

That night, she sees the cat’s owner posting on the Facebook group page, frantic. She smiles to herself, the cat curled up in her lap in a new pink collar.


	3. Gotcha

She still knows Eve’s mobile phone number. Of course she does. You do not forget a thing like that, not when it’s real love. Not even when the one you love doesn’t deserve it.

Eve might be dead. She might have bled out next to those towering white columns where she talked about spaghetti, or maybe later in a hospital bed.

Villanelle, she did not die when Eve put a knife in her. She lived, she fought, for Eve. To crawl back to her.

Eve probably did die. She gave up--on herself, on them. She would rather mourn the blood on her fingers, the blood of an evil slug of a man who the world is better without, than live with Villanelle, who is still alive and hungry for her.

Even so.

One day, Villanelle picks up her phone. Adds the number to her contacts, and puts a broken heart emoji where you are supposed to type the name. (You are allowed to be a little dramatic when you’re heartbroken.)

 _I got a cat_.

She stares at the words, appraising them. The text will be from an unfamiliar number, but Eve will know. She always does. It must still be there somewhere deep down, the piece that loves Villanelle.

Maybe she _is_ dead. Gone, shrunk, a tiny scream in a lifeless body that’s been burned up or buried. For the first time, Villanelle likes the idea of ghosts. Eve hovering just out of sight but close by. Watching always. When she chops firewood, or touches herself, or walks the beach alone, or wakes up crying without knowing why.

She adds the cat face emoji with the hearts for eyes, to show there are no hard feelings, and hits send.

 

* * *

 

 She goes on more beach walks, then graduates to mountain hikes, and does not wait for the sun anymore. She buys rain gear and expects that she will look awful--but no, she looks adorable even dressed in a bunch of plastic. Of course she does. She is still herself, after all, no matter what she has lost.

Sometimes she sees other people out there, their bodies interrupting the thick wooly green of the landscape. So brave, these hikers, sure that the fresh air is worth the risk of being all alone in the great wide wild. It would be a fun place to kill someone. There are so many creative possibilities. Sharp bits of trees, steep cliffs, big rocks. (Really, nothing is more classic than a big rock.) It’s pretty, too. She likes to do her work in a picturesque location when she can swing it.

But killing, that is not her. Not right now. She knows how good she is; working for free would be like pouring hundred-year-old single-malt scotch down the toilet. Besides, Aaron Peel smiled at himself in the mirror as he died and she hates the thought that she gave him any kind of satisfaction. It’s gross.

Maybe everybody wants to escape, no matter how good they have it on the outside. Maybe Villanelle does not owe them escape. It is exhausting to be an angel of mercy full time.

So she passes the hikers peaceably. Sometimes she waves.

Once she thinks a bear is in the brush, but it is only a black dog that’s wandered away from its owner. Her hand grips the pepper spray on her hip; she thinks about it. Could be funny. She decides it isn’t worth it. Something in her wants to keep going. Up, up, up.

(That is the kind of thing Eve would not like, pepper spraying a dog for the fun of it. Leave the innocent and stupid alone. Hurt the ones who deserve it. Villanelle never thought much about deserving until she met Eve. Eve, Eve _deserved_ it when she crumpled to the ground.)

Looking at the world from the top of the mountain is incredible. The town admits its tininess from this view; the sea and the uninterrupted green stretches of land might as well eat it.

Being here feels like finally standing right where she always is inside. Far away, seeing everything, seeing how small it all is. Lonely but powerful.

The rain steals away her tears. Still, she feels them, flashes of warmth on her face. Feeling is easier up here, even though she can’t check her reflection to see what it looks like.

 

* * *

 

When she gets home, soaking wet, limbs sore, her phone is waiting for her on the table. She checks, and there it is. The broken heart emoji, and the words:

_Poor cat._

Villanelle almost faints, the force of this feeling as strong as the bullet must have been. She stares at the screen, her eyes wet and hot, and presses her hand to her heart.

It takes awhile to compose herself. She does, though.

_Fuck you, she is flourishing. See?_

She sends a picture of the cat, lounging on top of its new elaborate scratching post.

Eve does not respond to the picture. It’s weird. People love cute animals. Maybe Eve is more fucked up than even Villanelle had thought.

She tries again. _I’m glad you are alive._

There is no answer, no answer, no answer. After waiting for twenty-eight minutes, Villanelle decides to cook dinner. She has lots of recipes saved on Pinterest, which is a website for boring women, but when you are planning to settle down, you have to open up to the possibility of getting a little boring. The trade-off is supposed to be worth it.

She is just sitting down with a glass of wine and a perfect Caprese salad when her phone chimes. She scrambles to pick it up, nearly knocking her glass over.

_You killed Gemma._

Villanelle sighs, frustrated. Another one who didn’t deserve it, if you want to get technical, though if you ask Villanelle being super annoying is a good reason to be shuffled off the mortal coil.

She sends back a series of texts.

 _You’re welcome. Now Niko will leave you alone._  
_Gemma was boring. I want to talk about you.  
What is the scar like? Send pics._

Instantly, Eve sends her a middle finger emoji. Villanelle laughs in spite of herself. Wherever Eve is, she is kicking herself for succumbing to the impulse--muttering swear words under her breath, probably, her eyes wide with exasperated disbelief at how she can never control herself where Villanelle is concerned.

Villanelle texts back with more enthusiasm. _Hers and hers. It is romantic._ She adds an emoji of two pink hearts circling around each other.

_You tried to kill me._

Hmph. _If I had tried, you would know from the being dead._

This might be a lie. It is hard to tell. At the time, she had meant it. It was a deep hurt, quick and necessary, like ripping off a bandaid or swallowing bitter medicine. But she had missed the head and the heart, and she is better than that. If she had meant it, she would have shot where it counted.

She decides to tell the truth. To Eve, that seems to matter. _You broke my heart._

She watches the little typing bubbles dance for awhile. Then finally, she gets: _You broke mine._

She knows that Eve means the killing, not anything to do with Villanelle. Eve is so in love with that nonexistent innocence she thinks is at the center of her soul. There is no cure for that kind of love. Maybe there is no cure for what Villanelle feels either.

_He was a bad person, Eve. He called his own kids ugly. He almost strangled me once. He would have gone on hurting people. You saved the ones he would have hurt. You are like a superhero._

She throws in a gif of Wonder Woman, for flair.

Eve doesn’t answer.

And doesn’t answer.

And doesn’t answer.

Villanelle closes her eyes and lies on her back on the floor and breathes in and out, in and out, very slow. The way Eve must have done in the ruins as the life slipped out of her and into the stifling hot air and Villanelle walked away, the still ground shaking under her feet.

The cat comes over and curls up beside her.

Finally, she tries again. A fool for love. _Guess where I am._

This time, Eve’s text comes back at once.

_You don’t want me to do that._

Villanelle waits a day, then snaps a picture of the _Fish you were here!_ postcard on the fridge and sends it. She gets no reply, but that’s okay. She knows one is coming in one shape or another.

 

* * *

 

Villanelle wanders the island with new eyes. She sends Eve pictures of everything. A tree full of bald eagles. Little black dots on the waves that are sea otters, even if you can’t tell this far away. The busy, beloved McDonald’s. A statue of a bearded fisherman in yellow rain gear outside a bed and breakfast. A steaming cup of coffee from a local shop that everyone goes to in rebellion against the town’s one Starbucks. The mountains, too magnificent for the camera to do them justice. The wind turbines eaten up by mist in the gray rainy sky. Once, after an hour of careful waiting in her car with the window rolled down: a scruffy bear strolling on the beach with the tall grass. The black numbers of the address that hang on the front of her rented house. This dumb dull place comes alive in the pictures, like a puzzle being born.

She stops sleeping in the middle of the bed, training herself to stick to the left side. (Eve can have the right, being so righteous and all.) They will do fine here. Anyone who wants them dead won’t bother to look this far, and nobody is interesting enough to kill.

She practices making spaghetti over and over again; she intends to be the best at it. She orders a pasta maker (like on Master of None, another show she watched alone) that the website refuses to ship here, because this place is hell but wetter, and finally finds one after asking around on the Facebook group page. When she buys groceries, people greet her by her new name. The cashier asks if she is planning a party.

“My wife is coming to meet me,” she says, her voice a little too like her own. “We always dreamed of living in Alaska, and we finally decided, ‘Why wait?’ Life is short, you know?”

“That’s so cool. I hope it’s everything you dreamt of.”

 _It will be,_ she would have said once.

“I do too,” she says now. 

 

* * *

 

And then one day, the sound of the rain on the roof is interrupted by a knock on the door.

Villanelle is in the middle of a bowl of popcorn and an episode of Queer Eye. She pauses the screen on a moment of everyone crying for some reason and gets up. The cat watches her curiously. She has never had a reason to answer the door before.

In the sun-shaped mirror, her reflection glows. Her hair is in a loose braid that she takes out, raking her fingers through it fast. Her loose white sweater slides off one shoulder, revealing a stretch of bare shoulder where her bra strap would have been if she was wearing a bra. She looks ready to be ravished.

Good.

She takes a deep breath, then opens the door a little.

There Eve is.

Eve -- in an ugly too-pink raincoat that is almost cute but not quite, her feet in sodden sneakers, her hair hanging loose, wet and glistening because she did not bother to put up her hood. Her hands are hidden behind her back.

“Gotcha,” she says, the word so low that the rain nearly drowns it. Villanelle feels it in her pulse, feels it everywhere.

The cat looks up from where it still lounges on the sofa, interested.

“Eve,” she says, playing it cool while a holy chorus sings out inside her, tossing her hair. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“You know me.” _I do. I_ do _._ “I’m great at putting clues together. Even when there isn’t a body count to follow.”

“Please. Have you seen these people? I have standards.”

Eve scoffs, a laugh like a snarl, and Villanelle wonders if she should have been killing all this time. If this would be going better if she had given Eve the kind of love letters Eve was used to.

 _I thought you wanted me to change,_ something screams inside of her. She quiets it as best she can. “You look beautiful.”

“So do you,” Eve returns.

“Oh, you know. The simple life really agrees with a girl.”

“So does almost bleeding out on a Roman ruin.”

“We should start a beauty blog.”

Eve snorts--an ugly sound, but Villanelle likes it. She likes the ugly snort-laugh, and the ugly coat, and the new ugly something in Eve’s eyes. She used to look at Eve and think, ‘I could make you so magnificent,’ but just now she can’t think of a single way to fix her. She just wants to drink her in.

“You’re wet,” Villanelle says.

“It’s raining.”

“It does that. All the time.”

“Who the fuck could live here?”

“You live in England.”

“This rain is worse. It’s angry.”

“Yes. It is.”

“So it’s not all you dreamed?”

“No. It is a huge fucking disappointment, actually.” Villanelle leans against the doorframe. Lifts her chin up defiantly. “But I like it anyway.”

Eve searches her face. “That’s not like you.”

“Maybe you don’t know what is like me. People can change.”

“Yes,” says Eve, “they can.”

Or maybe they can’t. Not all the way. Now that Eve is right there, the same old feeling cries out in Villanelle: reborn, slick and shining. Every color at once. _You’re mine. You’re mine. I’m yours._

Her fingertips beg to brush Eve’s face. She scolds them mentally, does not let them move. “You’re really here.”

“Where else could I be?”

“Dead,” Villanelle says fairly.

Eve steps forward. Closer, but not close enough. Her feet still haven’t crossed the threshold. She still hasn’t shown her hands. “You really think I’d let you off that easy?”

Villanelle shakes her head slightly. Eve’s eyes gleam, awake with something that had slept most of the time before. It is hypnotic. A snake swaying before the bite.

“Well then,” Villanelle says, her fingers caressing the door, opening it wide to the roar of the rain, “come in.”


End file.
